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BUT let us hence; for fair Locarno smiles | |
| Embowered in walnut slopes and citron isles: | |
| Or seek at eve the banks of Tusa’s stream, | |
| Where, mid dim towers and woods, her waters gleam. | |
| From the bright wave, in solemn gloom, retire | 5 |
| The dull-red steeps, and, darkening still, aspire | |
| To where afar rich orange lustres glow | |
| Round undistinguished clouds and rocks and snow: | |
| Or, led where Via Mala’s chasms confine | |
| The indignant waters of the infant Rhine, | 10 |
| Hang o’er the abyss: the else impervious gloom | |
| His burning eyes with fearful light illume. * * * * * | |
| When rueful moans along the forest swell | |
| Protracted, and the twilight storm foretell, | |
| And, headlong from the cliffs, a deafening load | 15 |
| Tumbles, and wildering thunder slips abroad; | |
| When on the summits darkness comes and goes, | |
| Hiding their fiery clouds, their rocks and snows; | |
| And the fierce torrent, from the lustre broad, | |
| Starts, like a horse, beside the flashing road,— | 20 |
| She seeks a covert from the battering shower | |
| In the roofed bridge; the bridge, in that dread hour, | |
| Itself all quaking at the torrent’s power. * * * * * | |
| ’T is morn: with gold the verdant mountain glows; | |
| More high, the snowy peaks with hues of rose. | 25 |
| Far stretched beneath the many-tinted hills, | |
| A mighty waste of mist the valley fills, | |
| A solemn sea! whose billows wide around | |
| Stand motionless, to awful silence bound; | |
| Pines, on the coast, through mist their tops uprear, | 30 |
| That like to leaning masts of stranded ships appear. | |
| A single chasm, a gulf of gloomy blue, | |
| Gapes in the centre of the sea, and through | |
| That dark mysterious gulf ascending, sound | |
| Innumerable streams with roar profound. | 35 |
| Mount through the nearer vapors notes of birds, | |
| And merry flageolet; the low of herds, | |
| The bark of dogs, the heifer’s tinkling bell, | |
| Talk, laughter, and perchance a church-tower knell. | |
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